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July 27, 2008

Solo Review: Who Can Kill a Child? (1976)

An English couple decide to take a two week vacation on some crappy little Island, before their baby is born, only to find the idyllic paradise inhabited by evil, and possibly possessed, little kids who want to murder them and then rape their dead corpses.

Awww, how not cute.

These kids do fun, cute little things such as beating old men to death, using corpses as pinatas, molesting dead bodies, and playing naked hopscotch. Luckily for the couple, they don't catch on to this stuff to early in their trip, so they get a chance to walk around and see the sights. The perfect vacation doesn't come along every day, you know?

Far be it from me to spoil the ending for you here, but suffice it to say that at least one of the kids doesn't make it.

He isn't sleeping.

Who Can Kill a Child? is a creepy endeavor; from the footage of real life war atrocities suffered by children over the opening credits, to the idea that an entire town full of kids gets possessed and kill the adults like it was a game. This movie gets under your skin and stays there, and in my case, it had me rooting for the adults to kill the kids, which is creepy in its own right.

It's a pretty well-made film for something from the 70's, and were it not for the dumb-as-a-box-of-hammers main characters, I'd say that it's amongst the best from that era. I just can't buy anyone leaving their pregnant wife alone in an abandoned town where death is imminent, while they go around looking for a bunch of creepy, murderous kids. That aspect of things did greatly add to the tension though.

Yeah, you're trapped.

So let me get this straight... You and your pregnant wife are on an island which appears deserted except for a bunch of kids, when you start to notice a few things that seem "odd," such as a small girl caning an old man to death, so that she and her friends can play pinata with the body, using a sickle. You tell your wife nothing is wrong, then leave her alone to rummage around in the attic while you're off finding more dead bodies in your hotel. Even when you see a gang of kids attempting to strip and rape a woman's newly-dead body, it takes you forever to say "We need to leave."

Right.

Don't run or anything, just stand there and stare like idiots.

A baby killing it's mother from inside of the womb is pretty messed up. Sickle-pinata with Granddad isn't very sweet either.

Little creep!

Plenty of bloody corpses are laying about, an old man gets beat to death off-screen, a game of sickle-pinata, kids get mowed down by a machine gun.... there's plenty of age-inappropriate carnage to be had here, folks.

Some naked corpse boobs... nothing exciting.

Those creepy little corpse rapers!

"Fuck this shit, we need to go!" Oh wait, they never actually said that...

If horrific shit starts to happen and you don't get the hell out of dodge, you deserve death. Also, fuck the Spanish Police.

Maybe they want to play?

As an effective Horror movie, I give this one an A, as it's creepy as hell and the premise is genuinely terrifying. However, the absolutely moronic behavior by the lead actors in the face of danger brings the film down a few grades, because it insulted our intelligence. It's worth checking out for sure, but I guarantee you'll be yelling "leave already!" at the screen way before the characters get smart enough to realize it on their own.

2 comments
:

i totally agree with your What did we learn paragraph thing "If weird shit starts to happen and you don't get the hell out of dodge, you deserve death; also, fuck the police" i haven't seen this movie but out of all the horror movies i have seen the people are always so dumb and the police NEVER help they always make it worse,think the person's crazy or get killed.waste of time putting cops in movies,if you ask me.

The husband tried to play macho too much and the wife is annoying as shit. Yeah, I was satisfied to see them die. I wished someone else showed up and threw a grenade or something similar into the crowd of kids.